Spring Frost Pekka Halonen

The winter views painted by Pekka Halonen after 1895, largely in Eastern Finland, stand out from among the artist’s other landscapes. The paintings are evocations of the season that defined the face of Finland for almost six months each year. Halonen always worked outdoors, even when temperatures fell below freezing. He conveys the bright, sunny, albeit frozen aspect of this predominant season, as well as its gloomy, grey, forbidding side. The small-scale, portrait-format landscape preserved in Budapest is a sensitive depiction of the transition to spring following the long, northern winter. Patches of snow of various sizes are still visible on slopes that are gradually turning green. A few houses are discernible at the top of the hill, while the sky is no more than a narrow strip at the top of the painting. Halonen’s patches of restrained colour can be traced back to the synthetism of Paul Gauguin, which he combines with Art Nouveau–inspired curves. Alongside Western European artistic trends, Halonen was influenced by Japanese art: he began collecting Japanese woodcut prints following his third visit to Paris.

Anett Somodi